Mackey's Classroom

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Vacation Is Coming

I have been super busy so far this summer cleaning out my house, remodeling our basement bathroom, and preparing for a BABY!! Yep, I am going to have another little nugget running around sometime in late November and I am excited. My nesting phase has kicked in full gear and I am wanting to get so many things accomplished before the start of the school year. I have also never had to prepare for a sub for 6 weeks, so if there are any suggestion on how to do that I would greatly appreciate them. My husband and I will get to find out for sure what we are having in three short weeks on July 9th and I'm super excited I can hardly contain myself. I will keep you posted on the sex of the baby in July.

We will be taking a family vacation this week, driving down to Houston, Texas. I was looking it up on google maps today, and boy howdy, I sure hope my almost three year old will be able to stay occupied while driving for that long. We will also be making a day of going to Galveston and seeing the beach, I am excited for my kids to see it for the first time. Any of you blogging buddies out there from the Houston/Galveston area, let me know if there are any fun things we for sure need to do while we are there.

Last but not least, Happy Father's Day to all those amazing fathers out there.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Let Summer Begin

I am officially on Summer Vacation, woo-hoo!!! I am excited to hang out with my kids this summer and relax for a while. I am also taking a college course, that of course is not very exciting, but it has to be done. I have some goals to get my house in order, since it has been out of sorts for the past school year. I am in need of cleaning out clothes, clothes, and more clothes and toys, toys, and more toys.

I of course will tell myself to go and work in my room so I can feel prepared when school starts, but I tend to say that every summer and never really go up there until the few weeks before school starts.

What are your plans for the summer??

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Homestretch

Wow, we are down to the homestretch. Only 10 days of school left. I can hardly believe it, but so excited for summer and being able to hang out with my kiddos and do some fun stuff. My students are so ready for summer to start, it's getting hard keeping their attention, but we will keep plugging along. I hope to get caught up this summer with some new products.

In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, I am having a sale of 20% off in my store, plus the additional 10% from TpT. So stock up for next year and save. Have a great Sunday and a wonderful work week!!

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Random Thoughts plus a review!!

I have been so far behind on life in general. Haven't been feeling the greatest lately and the end of the school year is kicking me in the hiney!! We officially have 25 days of school left and as all teachers know it is the craziest, busiest time of the year. I apologize for leaving all you wonderful followers in the dark lately. I have also been trying to complete two classes I am taking for ESL and I have no motivation to read my last three chapters and write my last paper. GRRRRR!!!

Weather was crazy here in Kansas, with a total of 112 tornadoes that touched ground. I hope all my fellow Kansan teachers are safe. We spent our Saturday evening following and watching the weather hoping our family and friends were safe. My 8 year old daughter also made her First Communion today, so we celebrated with friends and family.

I also want to take time to share with you a K-5 Reading and Math program that I have been using for the last six weeks. It was a free trial and it provides some great activities to help your kiddos with Math and Reading. The one thing that I really liked about it was that students can take a pre-test to see what level they are on. Then lessons are set up just for them on their individual level. Each activity is split apart with a game to keep the kids interested. It's also great because parents can log into their child's account and see how they are doing. If you are looking for another great technology resource to use in your classroom, you can check them out at any of the following places.

Website: http://www.k5learning.com
Blog: http://www.k5learning.com/blog
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/k5learning
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/k5learning

I hope you all have a wonderful week!! Twenty-five more days, can I do it???? Yes, I can!!!!

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Easter Activities!!

I am getting Spring Fever!! It has been so nice here in the midwest, upper 80's today and hardly any wind. I am so excited our KU Jayhawks beat Ohio last night and are in the championship finals Monday evening. Go KU!!! We are down to about 33 school days and I am getting pretty excited to spend the summer with my two girls, but there is still a lot that I need to get done with my kiddos. I love Easter and all that goes with it.

Here are some ideas you can use with your kids for review of compound words and math facts!

This first basket, kids are matching words to make compound words.

Click on the image to download the recording sheet!!

This basket, kids will match an addition or subtraction sentence to the sum or difference. You can really do anything with this and the kids will love it.

Here is the recording sheet for the math egg activity!

Some other ideas to use with those plastic eggs are: synonym matching, antonym matching, or even send an egg home with each student and have them fill it with an item. The kids have to guess what each kiddo brought by shaking it and making predictions.

Hope you all have a wonderful week! We only have a four day week, whoo-hoo!! Anybody else have only four days this week??

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

It's Almost April!

Wow, I just counted down how many days we have left until summer and I counted only 37!!! That is crazy, but I am getting pretty excited. So sorry I have been MIA this past week, Spring Break ended and I had to go back to work, as we all know how crazy it can be to go back after a week off. I hope to be posting some Easter/Spring freebies to my blog this weekend, so make sure to check back. Leave me a comment and let me know how many days of school you have left!!!

Also, stop by Erica Bohrer's blog and enter to win her Scholastic Spelling Booklet. She is giving away 10 autographed copies to some lucky winners. I sure hope that I win!!! She has amazing stuff for teachers. Click on the link below to go and enter her contest!! Good luck to you all, but I hope I win!!!

http://ericabohrer.blogspot.com/2012/03/20-super-spelling-centers-contest.html?showComment=1332899796772#c8134590701552562649

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Passing the award on!!

O.K. as I mentioned in the earlier post, I will be picking 15 blogs that deserve an award. This was tough because there are so many great blogs out there and they are all WONDERFUL!

Here are my 15 blogs I chose to recieve: